2. Darwin is an open source core based on FreeBSD according to Apple, Inc..
The more important half of that sentence is that it is based on Mach, as Mach will be responsible for managing the low-level hardware (MMU, etc.) which is mostly what changes between processor architectures.
AFAIK, there isn't currently an ARM port of Mach. But, being a microkernel means that the porting work shouldn't be ultimately difficult.
How does this have anything to do with "fair use"? You already had the ability to play these discs in any HD-DVD player.
No, you don't. Put an HDDVD drive in your PC, and more likely than not it will refuse to play, because your system components don't support setting up an encrypted communication channel between the software player and your monitor. Frankly, I don't have the money to spend on a new video card and monitor, and don't see why I should when there is no technical reason to do so. It is "fair use" to be able to play the video from media you have bought fairly. And when the copyright holder tries to stop me from doing so, because he happens to *not like* the computer I want to do it on, I don't see why I should listen.
Round 2 is people violating copyright claiming fair use
In this case, fair use is a pretty damned good argument. The fact that the videos will refuse to play because the player software has decided that it simply doesn't like your hardware is a good enough reason to circumvent the restrictions, IMO.
And if I owned the necessary hardware and such a disc, I'd be making that argument to the secretary of state that I should be allowed access to an unprotected copy, in order to be able to access the data as is my right as a valid licensee.
If a movie distributor revokes the key of my HD-DVD compliant player that I paid money for, thus making it useless, they can expect to find themselves receiving a county court claim form through the post a few days after I find out about it. Sure, they could afford to pay what I demanded (a refund of the cost of the player). But could they afford it if everyone who owned one did the same?
OK, so we're relying on a software flaw that exists now but could be closed at any time in the future due to the implementation of revocation lists. Newer OS designs will presumably make it harder and harder to gain access to a "protected" process's memory to perform this kind of debugging, and in the end we'll all be stuck with no keys again. Sounds useful.
Just by figuring this out hasn't the DMCA now been violated and soon the people who made the discovery will be violated as well in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
No. Only if the method is described to somebody else. And maybe only if the description is in the form of source code that can be compiled to a program that will crack the key on a disc, that one isn't entirely clear.
Yes, but how much processor time will be required to free them? If this guy used a 20 node overclocked Core2 Extreme cluster with 16GB RAM per node, and it took him 8 months to get the answer, then things aren't looking great for our ability to play HDDVDs on Linux any time soon.
2. I would imagine if built for an ARM processor, which a lot of these phones are, the RISC processors would actually run KDE a bit faster then your old 400 MHz processor.... As something on the side, what kind of 400 MHz processor are you using? Despite what Intel used to like us to believe, the processor speed is not everything.
It's a PII. Note that the ARM processors in phones probably only have a single execution pipeline (to save on power), and are therefore likely to be somewhat slower than the PII, which has two execution units.
3. On PDAs running Linux, we have Opie and GPE. Why do we need KDE?
Well, yes. I've always prefered software written for the kind of device in question, which makes me wonder even about using Linux: on a device where all storage is memory-based, does using it to emulate a disk and copying parts of it into memory make sense? Or would a system designed from the ground up to take advantage of memory storage devices make more sense? I think the latter sounds more likely to me. Which is why I've always avoided WinCE in favour of Palm devices.
Anyone who can tell the difference between 1080i/p is full of it and it's more dependent on the tv, cable, etc., than which HD format you're using.
Depends more on the content than anything else. On an interlaced picture, a thin horizontal line will appear to flicker.[1] To avoid this, content producers have to make sure they don't include any thin horizontal lines in graphics that are shown onscreen. Obviously this can be limiting, and they'd rather not have to worry. This is where progressive display resolutions come in.
This is the only reason you should care about having progressive display.
-- [1]: If you don't believe me, and have a DVD writer, grab a copy of ffmpeg and dvdauthor, create a png with a 1 pixel horizontal line in a 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) format, save it a few times (the more the better... you'll need at least 20 or so copies to get a good look) as line1.png, line2.png, etc.
You mean the mythical VHS versus Beta where the "better" format lost, or the _real_ VHS vs. Beta war where the better format (longer tapes, for one thing) actually won but where people keep propogating the "Beta was better than VHS!" myth?
Speaking as somebody who owned both beta and VHS players in the early 80s, I'm confident the picture quality on beta was *substantially* better. And I don't recally there being a big issue with the tapes, either. Sure, you could get 4 hours on a VHS while Beta was limited to 3. Big deal. I didn't care, and I'm not aware of anyone who did.
"No, we don't want porn released on our products, but secretly installing crippling software on computers -- regardless if people accept the EULA -- we fully support (*ahem* until we get caught and sued *ahem*)."
Just me or is that a big hypocritical?
Not at all. There are plenty of people who consider pornography morally unacceptable but think that trying to control what other people do is perfectly acceptable behaviour. Churches often have this view. And that's all Sony was doing -- trying to control your computer so you couldn't use it to do things they didn't want you to do. OK, so *we* happen to think that's totally unacceptable -- they are our computers -- but we don't have that warped worldview where controlling somebody else's life isn't wrong.
Really??? then why am I able to store HD content as Xvid at only 5.5 gig at full resolution and 120 minute length???
If most people had enough bandwidth to download 5.5GB movie files, why do you think most movies on torrent sites have been compressed down to either 1.4GB or 0.7GB? Sure, there's a few 4.5GB images out there, but not many.
KDE on a phone? Yeah, that's going to work. It runs like a dog on my 400MHz box. Most phones have, what, 200MHz processors? Need to be low power, you know...
VoIP over GPRS/EDGE? Clicks, pops, hiss, echo, machine-gun reverb, disconnects.
If you're getting these problems with a VOIP service, change service. The *only* issue I've ever had with VOIP is bad delay (c. 1 second) and random stuttering when there are packet delays. Echo is caused by using cheap phones / softphones that don't have adequate echo cancellation, and is therefore entirely avoidable. Running it over GPRS shouldn't be an issue; a GPRS link has more than enough bandwidth to cope with VOIP.
That said, all the carriers I've looked at charge more for GPRS data than they do for voice calls.
While clearly that's the intent, I don't exactly trust MS to get it right. Its a hard problem. Antivirus vendors have significantly more experience with heuristic code analysis than MS do, and they frequently get false positivies.
The game explorer is intended to provide ESRB rating support, along with presenting additional metadata in a clean and visible way... Part of this metadata would be things like system requirements.
I kind-of get his point here (despite the rest of the article being bollocks). ESRB rating and system requirements are things you should be checking before you install the game, not after. I mean, once you've installed a game, what more do you need to know about it?
All these things are non-standard for a typical folder so MS made a special "center" for it instead.
WindowsXP contains support for explorer 'detail view' column plugins. Why couldn't this have simply been built on this existing functionality?
So as long as whatever restricted account I run your game and/or auto-updater as as write permissions to those files, it should work, right?
Actually, it looks as though MS have gone out of their way to stop auto-updaters working in Vista. As I read the documentation (which somebody linked above), any program that has a filename including the keyword "update" (for example) will need an admin password to run. And they've analysed lots of different updater programs for common byte streams and blacklisted them, and stuff like that.
So, no, the auto-updater won't work from a restricted account, unless it's written very carefully.
#1. All MS has done is move the Vista security up to what every other major OS does. Does this developer NOT realize that a game on OSX or Linux would require the same 'privledges' if written as the developer suggests?
To be fair, on OSX or Linux it's usually possible to write a game that will run from a user's home directory and which therefore doesn't need admin privileges to install. This is also possible under XP. Under Vista, it's tricky, because Vista uses undocumented heuristics to recognise install programs and ask for admin privileges anyway.
Waaaah, parental controls prevent kids who shouldn't be playing our games anyway from playing them!
To be fair, what he said here is substantially less whiny than that: parental controls prevent kids from playing any game whose developer isn't willing to pay a fee somewhere in excess of $5000 to ESRB.
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2. Darwin is an open source core based on FreeBSD according to Apple, Inc..
The more important half of that sentence is that it is based on Mach, as Mach will be responsible for managing the low-level hardware (MMU, etc.) which is mostly what changes between processor architectures.
AFAIK, there isn't currently an ARM port of Mach. But, being a microkernel means that the porting work shouldn't be ultimately difficult.
How does this have anything to do with "fair use"? You already had the ability to play these discs in any HD-DVD player.
No, you don't. Put an HDDVD drive in your PC, and more likely than not it will refuse to play, because your system components don't support setting up an encrypted communication channel between the software player and your monitor. Frankly, I don't have the money to spend on a new video card and monitor, and don't see why I should when there is no technical reason to do so. It is "fair use" to be able to play the video from media you have bought fairly. And when the copyright holder tries to stop me from doing so, because he happens to *not like* the computer I want to do it on, I don't see why I should listen.
Round 2 is people violating copyright claiming fair use
In this case, fair use is a pretty damned good argument. The fact that the videos will refuse to play because the player software has decided that it simply doesn't like your hardware is a good enough reason to circumvent the restrictions, IMO.
And if I owned the necessary hardware and such a disc, I'd be making that argument to the secretary of state that I should be allowed access to an unprotected copy, in order to be able to access the data as is my right as a valid licensee.
Revoke the key. It will happen each time.
If a movie distributor revokes the key of my HD-DVD compliant player that I paid money for, thus making it useless, they can expect to find themselves receiving a county court claim form through the post a few days after I find out about it. Sure, they could afford to pay what I demanded (a refund of the cost of the player). But could they afford it if everyone who owned one did the same?
OK, so we're relying on a software flaw that exists now but could be closed at any time in the future due to the implementation of revocation lists. Newer OS designs will presumably make it harder and harder to gain access to a "protected" process's memory to perform this kind of debugging, and in the end we'll all be stuck with no keys again. Sounds useful.
Just by figuring this out hasn't the DMCA now been violated and soon the people who made the discovery will be violated as well in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
No. Only if the method is described to somebody else. And maybe only if the description is in the form of source code that can be compiled to a program that will crack the key on a disc, that one isn't entirely clear.
So rejoice. The HD-DVD media keys will be free.
Yes, but how much processor time will be required to free them? If this guy used a 20 node overclocked Core2 Extreme cluster with 16GB RAM per node, and it took him 8 months to get the answer, then things aren't looking great for our ability to play HDDVDs on Linux any time soon.
2. I would imagine if built for an ARM processor, which a lot of these phones are, the RISC processors would actually run KDE a bit faster then your old 400 MHz processor. ...
As something on the side, what kind of 400 MHz processor are you using? Despite what Intel used to like us to believe, the processor speed is not everything.
It's a PII. Note that the ARM processors in phones probably only have a single execution pipeline (to save on power), and are therefore likely to be somewhat slower than the PII, which has two execution units.
3. On PDAs running Linux, we have Opie and GPE. Why do we need KDE?
Well, yes. I've always prefered software written for the kind of device in question, which makes me wonder even about using Linux: on a device where all storage is memory-based, does using it to emulate a disk and copying parts of it into memory make sense? Or would a system designed from the ground up to take advantage of memory storage devices make more sense? I think the latter sounds more likely to me. Which is why I've always avoided WinCE in favour of Palm devices.
no way you can get VoIP to work decently over a 2 to 3kb/s link with wildly variable latency like that.
Hmmm. My local carriers offer 60kb/s GPRS. I haven't tested the latency, but I don't think it's anything like that bad.
The most successful online porn retailers use some pretty complex referral systems and networks of sites to generate cash. You need cash for this.
Actually, the main advantage of a referal system is that you *don't* need upfront cash for it -- you pay out of your takings.
Anyone who can tell the difference between 1080i/p is full of it and it's more dependent on the tv, cable, etc., than which HD format you're using.
/dev/zero -shortest -target pal-dvd -aspect 4:3 test.vob
Depends more on the content than anything else. On an interlaced picture, a thin horizontal line will appear to flicker.[1] To avoid this, content producers have to make sure they don't include any thin horizontal lines in graphics that are shown onscreen. Obviously this can be limiting, and they'd rather not have to worry. This is where progressive display resolutions come in.
This is the only reason you should care about having progressive display.
--
[1]: If you don't believe me, and have a DVD writer, grab a copy of ffmpeg and dvdauthor, create a png with a 1 pixel horizontal line in a 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) format, save it a few times (the more the better... you'll need at least 20 or so copies to get a good look) as line1.png, line2.png, etc.
ffmpeg -i line%d.png -f s8 -i
dvdauthor -o . --title --file=test.vob
dvdauthor -o . --toc
then write the result VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS dirs and play them back on your TV.
You mean the mythical VHS versus Beta where the "better" format lost, or the _real_ VHS vs. Beta war where the better format (longer tapes, for one thing) actually won but where people keep propogating the "Beta was better than VHS!" myth?
Speaking as somebody who owned both beta and VHS players in the early 80s, I'm confident the picture quality on beta was *substantially* better. And I don't recally there being a big issue with the tapes, either. Sure, you could get 4 hours on a VHS while Beta was limited to 3. Big deal. I didn't care, and I'm not aware of anyone who did.
since HD-DVD isn't limited to 60min like Beta was that isn't as much of an issue
Huh? I'm sure I remember having 3 hour tapes on my old Sony C5.
"No, we don't want porn released on our products, but secretly installing crippling software on computers -- regardless if people accept the EULA -- we fully support (*ahem* until we get caught and sued *ahem*)."
Just me or is that a big hypocritical?
Not at all. There are plenty of people who consider pornography morally unacceptable but think that trying to control what other people do is perfectly acceptable behaviour. Churches often have this view. And that's all Sony was doing -- trying to control your computer so you couldn't use it to do things they didn't want you to do. OK, so *we* happen to think that's totally unacceptable -- they are our computers -- but we don't have that warped worldview where controlling somebody else's life isn't wrong.
Really??? then why am I able to store HD content as Xvid at only 5.5 gig at full resolution and 120 minute length???
If most people had enough bandwidth to download 5.5GB movie files, why do you think most movies on torrent sites have been compressed down to either 1.4GB or 0.7GB? Sure, there's a few 4.5GB images out there, but not many.
'Cause 0-60 in 7.1s and top speed of 140MPH isn't enough for you?
(stats here, requires flash).
KDE on a phone? Yeah, that's going to work. It runs like a dog on my 400MHz box. Most phones have, what, 200MHz processors? Need to be low power, you know...
VoIP over GPRS/EDGE? Clicks, pops, hiss, echo, machine-gun reverb, disconnects.
If you're getting these problems with a VOIP service, change service. The *only* issue I've ever had with VOIP is bad delay (c. 1 second) and random stuttering when there are packet delays. Echo is caused by using cheap phones / softphones that don't have adequate echo cancellation, and is therefore entirely avoidable. Running it over GPRS shouldn't be an issue; a GPRS link has more than enough bandwidth to cope with VOIP.
That said, all the carriers I've looked at charge more for GPRS data than they do for voice calls.
Well, sure. But worst comes to worst, it doesn't identify an installer, and the install fails
No, worst is that identifies a program that isn't an installer as being an installer, and won't let you run it without an admin password.
While clearly that's the intent, I don't exactly trust MS to get it right. Its a hard problem. Antivirus vendors have significantly more experience with heuristic code analysis than MS do, and they frequently get false positivies.
What secure method for retrieving the patch would you suggest to this illiterate user?
I'd suggest a method that doesn't require disabling the firewall. There are plenty of them available, like downloading a program over HTTP.
The game explorer is intended to provide ESRB rating support, along with presenting additional metadata in a clean and visible way... Part of this metadata would be things like system requirements.
I kind-of get his point here (despite the rest of the article being bollocks). ESRB rating and system requirements are things you should be checking before you install the game, not after. I mean, once you've installed a game, what more do you need to know about it?
All these things are non-standard for a typical folder so MS made a special "center" for it instead.
WindowsXP contains support for explorer 'detail view' column plugins. Why couldn't this have simply been built on this existing functionality?
So as long as whatever restricted account I run your game and/or auto-updater as as write permissions to those files, it should work, right?
Actually, it looks as though MS have gone out of their way to stop auto-updaters working in Vista. As I read the documentation (which somebody linked above), any program that has a filename including the keyword "update" (for example) will need an admin password to run. And they've analysed lots of different updater programs for common byte streams and blacklisted them, and stuff like that.
So, no, the auto-updater won't work from a restricted account, unless it's written very carefully.
#1. All MS has done is move the Vista security up to what every other major OS does. Does this developer NOT realize that a game on OSX or Linux would require the same 'privledges' if written as the developer suggests?
To be fair, on OSX or Linux it's usually possible to write a game that will run from a user's home directory and which therefore doesn't need admin privileges to install. This is also possible under XP. Under Vista, it's tricky, because Vista uses undocumented heuristics to recognise install programs and ask for admin privileges anyway.
Waaaah, parental controls prevent kids who shouldn't be playing our games anyway from playing them!
To be fair, what he said here is substantially less whiny than that: parental controls prevent kids from playing any game whose developer isn't willing to pay a fee somewhere in excess of $5000 to ESRB.